So What’s the Real Agenda?

I don’t think it’s too much of a secret at this point, but the GOP-led drive to restrict voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act has another ugly side to it, aside from propagating the largely fictional belief that voter fraud is a terrible problem, worthy of preventing hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from going to the polls. That side — eloquently presented by A.C. Valdéz of LatinoUSA on Democracy Now! — involves the bête noire of any God-fearing Republican: low-wage workers, often Latino and African-American. In other words, people who won’t vote Republican. Valdéz notes that lower turnout among those ethnicities may be because a number of them work three or four low-wage jobs just to pay the rent.

What this means — aside from voter ID laws, which also disproportionately affect Latino and African-American voters — is that restricting early voting and mail voting makes it much more difficult for low-wage workers to vote, thus inhibiting low-wage workers from voting for a higher minimum wage. Not only that, but preventing those individuals from voting in favor of measures like maternal/paternal leave, daycare services, expanded healthcare access, etc. (measures long standard in most other “advanced” industrial countries, that the United States either does not provide or provides very little of). Sometimes the “vast Right-wing conspiracy” theory isn’t much of a theory; it’s a reality.

Addendum: The Democracy Now! live election coverage was a joint effort with The Nation (of which I am a proud subscriber).